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Alex Chilton's Ironic Guitar

Alex Chilton, the singer and guitarist, opened his show on Thursday night at the Knitting Factory by saying, ''Let's boogie.'' Few phrases have been as ironic. Launching into a blues medley - ''Te Ni Nee Ni Nu'' and ''Tip On In'' - by the guitarist Slim Harpo, Mr. Chilton proceeded to sing lines like ''Lay it on me, baby'' without any of the black affectations a listener expects from a white performer. Mr. Chilton is from Memphis; at age 16 he was the lead singer for a ''blue-eyed-soul'' group, the Box Tops.

Mr. Chilton and his tight band -Mike Maffei on bass and Doug Garrison on drums - reduced soul and blues to garage-band simplicity; they sounded like a Southern fraternity band that plays regularly. Mr. Chilton would knowingly warble a few amateurish choruses of a song, sparking laughter from the audience, and after that plop down a blues riff or two, sing some more and then rip off a solo. He's a soul and blues guitar connoisseur; he chooses his guitar licks as carefully as he does the blues songs he covers, and during his solos, a listener heard a history of soul and blues guitar.

Mr. Chilton is a smug performer, obviously happy with himself. One of his own tunes, ''Bangkok,'' had lines about Jacqueline Onassis and ''a little town in Southeast Asia.'' He also sang the kitsch Italian standard ''Volare.'' Irony flowed over everything, and it was hard to tell exactly what Mr. Chilton was after, except perhaps a little fun.

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A version of this review appears in print on May 30, 1988, on Page 1001018 of the National edition with the headline: Alex Chilton's Ironic Guitar. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe